Photographers Q: whats white balance all about?

[sestrel]

I have a nikon P6000 and never change the w/b. What difference would it make if I did, and whats the best way to do it, and when.?

[a900ss]

Have a play and see for yourself!!!

Basically our eyes have auto white balance and cancel out any colour casts that the supplying light offers.

A camera doesn't and will therefore pick up on the colour casts that things like indoor lighting gives. Auto WB is normally very good on the cameras but can get fooled so you can either set the WB to the correct light source to ensure the photos have the correct colours or you can set the correct K (Kelvin) but that is a totally different level of skill that does
require some basic kit.

Some lights are cold and look more blue, others are warmer so look more red.

Good luck and do have a play with manual settings, you've nothing to lose.

[Rob]

Or take the pics as RAW files and play with the white balance afterwards using your software.

[ralphy]

Or take the pics as RAW files and play with the white balance afterwards using your software.

This you can do (assuming the original image was not a jpg) of course, but I do think it's preferable to get the WB as close as possible in the camera.

R

[robcat]

WB is a bit of a pain, and very easy to get wrong - dark dial watches can fool the auto WB, and you can also end up with the steel looking wrong. You can buy photographic grey cards for very little, and then manually set the WB for the particular light conditions. This will keep the colours true.

Also halogen bulbs with whiter light are better than warmer tungsten or energy saver flourescent. (Although some fluorescent's are daylight-equivalent).

[Itsguy]

Just in case the previous replies haven't cleared this up for you, to set the white balance of a camera you point it at something that should be white in the final picture and press the set button. A piece of white paper will do, or to avoid overexposure and an error, neutral grey can be used. Or you can just point it at anything you think should be white (eg a white wall). This will avoid the white object appearing as eg blue-ish or yellow in your picture.

You can leave it on auto if you are happy with the results that gives you. Or you will have some presets available, such as outdoor, indoor, sunny, overcast. Or you can set it manually if you actually want to eg. warm up a cosy interior. You may have to set it manually or by using a white / grey card if you are in a challenging lighting situation where there are mixtures of daylight (quite blue), and tungsten (quite yellow). In these situations the auto setting may well get quite confused and produce a complete mess. Or pros may choose to set it precicely when possible, just to get it spot on and have pictures that look right, straight out of the tin. Video cameramen will often set it manually before shooting interviews, to ensure natural skin tones.

You can correct errors in post, particularly shooting raw when you can choose the white balance setting later on, however with jpegs and video it makes sense to get it as close as possible to correct if you can.

[learningtofly]

Or do what I do - turn off all the lights and don't worry about it

[VDG]

Its about Meh and WOW :) seriously though, WB can be adjusted in the post processing quite easily if you have a reference point ie something white or grey in the frame and/or have RAW rather than JPG (which provides less flexibility) however as per above best results especially in some tricky lighting conditions achieved with grey cards or setting WB manually, plenty of info on this on the web. Good luck.

[aldfort]

OK - from a strict amateur but I'll try to answer the question.

As has been said white balance is intended to make something that is white IRL look white in your picture.
Usually your camera will get it right so you need to do nothing. White balance is nothing to do with under or over exposure. Be sure that washed out colour in a picture or loss of highlight detail is not your problem before worrying about white balance.

Here is what I do.

1) At a particular location look at the picture you just took. Does the colour seem right? are the whites white? If yes then plod on taking pictures.
2) If no then your camera has some pre-set white balance settings. Pick one of those then take another test shot.
3) If the colours seem right to you then leave the camera on this setting and plod on taking pictures.
4) If the colour still seems wrong then you need to set a custom white balance. Different camera's do this in different ways so you need to get the book out and see how to do it with yours. On some it's easy on others it's a faff.

Generally you can only set white balance yourself if you are in the more advanced modes Av or Tv or P etc. If you are in the "pictogram" modes most camera's tend not to let you mess with white balance.

[Paul J]

Have a play and see for yourself!!!

Basically our eyes have auto white balance and cancel out any colour casts that the supplying light offers.

A camera doesn't and will therefore pick up on the colour casts that things like indoor lighting gives. Auto WB is normally very good on the cameras but can get fooled so you can either set the WB to the correct light source to ensure the photos have the correct colours or you can set the correct K (Kelvin) but that is a totally different level of skill that does
require some basic kit.

Some lights are cold and look more blue, others are warmer so look more red.

Good luck and do have a play with manual settings, you've nothing to lose.

Thanks for this - I've often wondered!

[ralphy]

This might be of interest to the OP:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...te-balance.htm

R